Li Qiang watched the tail end of the refugee line with his soldier's eye. "They'll strain us," he said. "But they also add hands. If we can teach them quickly, they can hold an alley while we hold the wall."
"We'll need more tablets," Ren muttered, already calculating clay and scribes. "More pigeons. More jars. More… everything."
Zhao blew out a breath, eyes turned eastward where a smear of smoke still troubled the horizon.
"Congratulations," he said. "You've just founded an empire of opinion."
"Empires fall," Ziyan said. "Opinions spread. I'm choosing the one that doesn't need a palace."
Han glanced toward the keep.
"Speaking of palaces," he said, "you know this proclamation of yours will reach one soon. Two, in fact. Zhang's scribes are too curious; Xia's too."
"Good," Ziyan said. "Let them learn the word 'Road City' from our mouths, not from each other's."
She looked up at the bare stone they had set aside for their first public carving. It waited, smooth and expectant.
"Ren," she said. "Bring the text."
He hurried off, clutching his half-dried clay copy like a baby.
Feiyan's hand brushed Ziyan's sleeve. "When you carve this," she murmured, "you're carving a target, too."
"The target's already there," Ziyan said. "Written on their maps. This way, at least, we choose its shape."
She descended into the square.
People gathered as if pulled by a slow tide. Old men leaned on canes, children on barrels, women on each other. Even the Stone Gate refugees, dazed as they were, found room to stand and watch. The sparrow above the gate peered down, crooked and interested.
Ren set his clay on a low stool. The wet characters shone dark.
"Say it again," Ziyan told him. "So we all hear it before we scar it into stone."
He cleared his throat and read, voice steady, the proclamation they'd drafted:
"By the will of those who walk the Road Under Heaven, we declare that any hall, farm, ferry, tavern, or town that hangs the sparrow mark and abides by these tablets is part of the Road City. Our law walks where our people agree it does. Our riders answer where they can. We claim no throne, but we claim this: that those who live by our law shall not be named rebel by any throne without us speaking back."
The words hung in the cold like breath.
"Any changes?" Ren asked.
"'Part of the Road City,'" Lin Chang echoed, rolling the phrase in her mouth like wine. "I like the sound. Annoying, but solid."
"'Our riders answer where they can,'" Han said. "Don't promise more than we have horses for."
"It already doesn't," Feiyan said dryly.
"The last line," the midwife said. "Make it sharper. Thrones don't understand 'speaking back.' They understand 'answer.'"
Ren's brush hovered. Ziyan nodded.
"Change it," she said. "Write: '…shall not be named rebel by any throne without us answering.'"
Ren amended the clay.
"Answer how?" a voice called from the back. A Stone Gate man, soot still in his hair. "With words? With pigeons?"
"With whatever the day allows," Ziyan said. "Sometimes words. Sometimes riders. Sometimes refusing to die on their schedule."
Feiyan's eyes glinted. "Sometimes with knives."
A murmur of dark approval.
"Then carve it," Wei said. "Before someone thinks of another phrase and we're here all winter."
Ziyan took the chisel.
She was not a carver. Her hands knew quill and sword better. The chisel felt clumsy.
"Here," Feiyan said softly, guiding her grip. "Like teaching a knife to sing, remember? Less force. More insistence."
The first stroke bit into the stone with a small, protesting shriek. Dust puffed, pale.
Ziyan carved the character for Road first. It came out slightly crooked. Appropriate.
As she worked, the square breathed with her. Each groove felt like an argument made permanent enough to trip someone.
By the time she finished the last answering, her fingers ached and the light had shifted. The words were not beautiful, but they were undeniable.
Ren stepped back. "There," he said. "If anyone forgets what we decided, they can come squint at this until they're angry enough to remember."
The midwife spat lightly at the base. "For luck," she said. "And for argument."
Children traced the shallow grooves with grubby fingers until the midwife chased them off.
Cao Mei approached, shrine tablet still on her back.
"You've carved yourself a city," she said. "Now see if it holds."
Ziyan met her gaze. "Help me make it," she said.
Cao Mei hesitated, then nodded once. "Fine," she said. "Somebody has to bake for all these idiots."
Laughter rippled. It sounded like something living.
Above them, pigeons shifted in their coop.
Ren tore a copy of the proclamation from his clay, brushed it onto silk, and began tying it to waiting legs.
"Where first?" he asked.
"Haojin," Ziyan said. "Reed Mouth. Any hall we know with a sparrow already. Ji Lu. Ren Kanyu. Even Du Yan, if Wang Yu thinks he can get it through."
"That's a lot of birds," Wei muttered.
"Good," Ziyan replied. "Let the sky learn our handwriting."
One by one, the pigeons flew, silk scraps fluttering.
Far to the west, in Bai'an, Ren Kanyu would soon be handed a copy of the proclamation he had half-predicted. In Qi's archives, Ji Lu would unfold the same words and feel the floor creak. In Ash Hall, Zhang would eventually receive a smear of ink that refused to fit inside his neat circles.
Here, in a square that had once been just another town's stomach, people touched the new-cut words and argued about them. Already, a boy was insisting they should have added something about dogs.
The Road City existed now. Not in any one hall or gate, but in the space between a burned village's grief and a frightened town's decision to stand anyway.
Ziyan looked east, toward the horizon that hid Stone Gate's ruin and Zhang's ash.
"Now," she said softly, to herself, to Feiyan, to anyone listening, "let's see what they call us when we answer."
The wind did not bless. It did not curse. It picked up a little dust from the new carving and carried it outward, along the road.